Joseph Usibelli and Peggy Shumaker

00:04 Hello, I'm Peggy Shoemaker. I'm 60 years old. This is October 4th, 2012. We are at Denali Center in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I'm talking to Joe use the bell in my beloved and my husband.

00:20 Hi, my name is Joe usibelli. I am 73 going on a hundred today is what day is today? That'll be pulling on October 4th. I could listen how we are in Fairbanks, Alaska and Peggy is my wife and and love of my life.

00:41 That works works.

00:44 Okay, so I think I'd like to start by talking about where you were born. Joe. Tell people a little about Sun Trine kind of at the northeast corner of Denali National Park and Preserve.

01:03 And

01:05 It was very remote at the time. I was born 1938. I had a real connection to the world and that was all know Road didn't even have an airstrip is that time? She couldn't even fly in and out think of your mom being out there in the cold camping. She was 33. She thought that she wasn't going to have any children and here you came and Joe was born 3 days after Christmas December 28th 1938 in this Cole Camp. If anything would have gone wrong. They would have had to put his mom in a truck that was fitted to run on the rail the rails for the railroad that's called The Doodlebug taking her out to the the spur to the railroad tracks and flag down the next train so, you know because it was because it was December 28th. It was really cold. It was really dark at that time of the year. We get about three and a half hours of daylight, but the guy who ran the

02:05 Generator at the coal mine was generous and left the lights on after 10. So she wouldn't have to have her baby in the dark. I think she was heroic, but fortunately she didn't have any complications new doctor. No nurse. Just other women to help her.

02:21 So should we start over?

02:23 Did you talk about how it felt when the only way to get Fairbanks was on the train? There was no Road between Fairbanks or Anchorage right information for that matter and

02:39 I don't know just the way the way I grew up. I didn't know any better. I didn't know people could go out drive cars all over the world. So it was something we did.

02:51 Fairly frequently how to get food food came from Fairbanks, but mostly it came in and shipments you would order it and it would come in a box car and people go together an order a lot of stuff at the same time and maybe do that once or twice a year and the rest of time your mom had a huge Garden. She had a garden my dad hunted. So we ate a lot of wild game. There was a commissary it's heated river called mine, which is the company that ran that particular mine, but it really didn't have a lot of choices except beer. It had a lot of beer had a baker who would dumb work at the mess hall and make it so that was later. He made homemade donuts every morning.

03:48 But I know everybody was pretty self-sufficient and I remember the first time in the commissary.

03:58 And he river that I saw bananas and stalk of Manning. Hang in there. And I thought that was pretty wonderful. I'm going to a one-room school and I will drag her up. Basically Outdoors like most kids did at that time and I know I would go for hours my mother never worried about where I was because how far could I get accepted course for the river they worried about the river lot. And when I started school and has five it was the one room School.

04:35 And for the first seven grades, that's what I did to one room school that had anywhere from 8 to maybe 15 students in eight grades. Well, maybe not every great every year. So it's just whoever was there pretty stable base of students, but the lot that came and went

05:01 But it was a marvelous way to get an education and you could do your lessons and then the next grade in the next grade so you came out of school early.

05:09 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I had a teacher that I was a teacher's pet which was I recommend.

05:17 Not necessary for the teacher before the student and I did the second and third grade in the same here. And there's a thing as I would finish my lessons and I would listen to you can't help but listen to all the others has every siding her and so I learned a lot of stuff.

05:36 By reputation over years when your dad hurt himself in the underground.

05:48 But he was working in the underground for heater River call and there was a small cave in and he could be broke his back.

05:58 Fortunate wasn't crippling there was no spinal cord damage. And so when he healed up

06:07 They put him back to work long enough to prove he could work.

06:12 And then they fired him cuz he didn't want to continue in liability.

06:16 But he was such a hard worker that they gave him a contract to supply Timber how the sports wrist supports for the underground mine. And so that's when he started his own company.

06:32 Cutting Timber and bought a truck and had a small tractor.

06:37 And lived on that for quite a while and he and his brother cuz all that wood by hand using a mystery whip another Day's Journey Sweden.

06:52 It was all hand done and hand loaded course timbertree underground Hardware large huge logs for

07:05 But then World War II came on the military said they wanted a second supplier of call.

07:13 And so he being the only one that was in a position at that time really to start.

07:21 Company mining company they arranged for him to get some laces on Military land her federal land and I'm staring military land and gave him a small contract.

07:34 And that's how we get started in a coal mine. As far as company is concerned with 10,000 and how much did the coal mine do last about to pull over 2 million?

07:53 Do you want to talk about, you want to talk about going to the university?

07:58 Sure.

08:03 No, I was too young then. I was actually I have a lot of photos of me.

08:12 As a babe in arms really while he was doing that cuz I was born in 38. He starts at mine in 42, so I was still little.